I enjoy tracking some pretty obscure internet niches. One of them is webcomics which is a different sub-genre than digital comics, which is differentiated further still from the copyright-flaunting, underground world of scanned comics.

Something popped up on one of my RSS feeds that bears repeating. A fan of the Simpsons re-imagined an iconic picture of the characters in her own (manga-esque) drawing style. It came to the attention of creator Matt Groening (Simpson’s triva - it rhymes with ‘Braining’) when it was voted to the front page of the massively popular DeviantArt site - and subsequently dugg. He liked it so much that he contacted her and commissioned her to produce her own comic under his Bongo Comics label and is now in discussions to work on the relaunch of his other wildly creative show (and one of my personal favorites) show, Futurama.

The question I have is why can’t other big media industries embrace this kind of thinking instead of suing their customers like the RIAA has been doing for years with music samples, then re-mixes, then mash-ups?

Here’s the story told better, along with the picture itself - which I think is pretty good:

The_Simpsonzu_by_spacecoyote